Iro's One Movie a Day Thread

Female Prisoner 701: Scorpion is a great movie.

Really?

I'm with Iro on this one, even short it feels padded out, but maybe that's because I'm not a fan of either of the subgenres that are indulged in here. The 'women in prison' subgenre I find particularly boring more often than not and scenes of torture have never done anything for me either.

I'd recommend seeing the Lady Snowblood films if you've not already.

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

I figured.

#430 - Audition
Takashi Miike, 1999



A middle-aged widower who works for a video production company decides to hold an "audition" in order to find himself a new wife.

It's probably just as well that the promotional artwork for Audition frequently emphasises the female lead with her cruelly vacant expression and a lengthy syringe held ever so casually in her gloved hand, otherwise it's possible to walk into the film thinking that it's going to be some off-beat dramedy about a widower looking for love through unconventional methods. I mean, just look at that logline, then look at that header image (or vice versa). Of course, the fact that the film effectively spoils itself before one even gets to sit down and watch it is most likely a deliberate choice by the filmmakers - even when one watches the film and starts to pick up on the subtle hints that all is not what it seems, it's not hard to jump to some rather extreme conclusions. The film is content to play the waiting game as it sets up its sad and tragicomic tale. The widowed father of a teenage boy is encouraged to get back out there and remarry, so his friend who works in video production suggests that they hold an audition for a film and select a suitable companion from one of the applicants who isn't talented enough to actually get the role (which is not an uncommon practice within the world of the film, apparently). Eventually, he decides on one young woman whose despondent prose draws him in and...

Well, to go into any further detail would naturally spoil things too much (though like I said, it's one of those films where you do have to spoil it a little when talking about it), but it's an effective slow-burn that, though it does venture into genuinely unsettling and disgusting territory, doesn't feel like the kind of gratuitous shock-value content that I've condemned other films for using in the past. The frequently unobtrusive technical style eventually gives way to sufficiently mind-bending choices of photography and editing that are enough to keep an audience on edge through the surprisingly unpredictable second half and all the way up until the closing credits roll. The second half guarantees that this will most definitely not be a film for sensitive viewers, but Audition surprisingly exercises a relative amount of restraint that only serves to make the film as a whole have that much more of an impact as a result. It's got considerable substance beyond its more graphic scenes, with many scenes taking a satirical view towards subjects such as gender roles, loneliness, and the entertainment industry. It's all carried by some solid actors who are able to pull off shallowness or depth as the characters and story require.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

This is a movie that I didn't really like the first time I watch it but then I rewatch it and like it a lot by the way very nice review Iro !

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''Haters are my favourite. I've built an empire with the bricks they've thrown at me... Keep On Hating''
- CM Punk
http://threemanbooth.files.wordpress...unkshrug02.gif

i have a question - are you watching movies from a list? like do you have a to-watch list you're drawing these from, or is it just kinda random/dependent on your mood? i've noticed you watch all different kinds of movies so i was suspecting that you were taking requests, ha

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letterboxd

Short answer: random.

#431 - Margaret
Kenneth Lonergan, 2011



When a woman is struck and killed by a bus, the outcome affects the lives of several different characters.

The difficult path that Margaret took from its 2007 production to its 2011 release saw the film get whittled down from a five-hour rough cut to a more digestible two-and-a-half hours in time for its release. This development goes some way towards explaining why the final product comes across as an extremely disjointed attempt to build an elaborate ensemble drama, though it does little to excuse it. The plot unfolds when a high-school girl (Anna Paquin) distracts a bus driver (Mark Ruffalo) and causes him to run over a bystander (Allison Janney), leading to her immediate death. Though the film does appear to juggle a few different character strands, it focuses mainly on Paquin's character as she struggles with the guilt of having not only caused a fatal accident, whether it's through attempts to bury the pain through empty sexual encounters or by getting into heated arguments with multiple different characters. The moral dilemma eventually leads to her trying to launch a case against Ruffalo and the bus company for negligence, which drives much of what could be considered the A-plot.

Said A-plot almost gets buried under a film that tries to develop a number of different character arcs, most of which involve Paquin interacting with other principals (the exception would be the protagonist's mother dating a cultured European gentleman). Unfortunately, the moral dilemma that drives the film is too thin to hold up under such an unwieldy running time and results in a film that works on a scene-by-scene basis more so than as a sufficiently unified whole. There are decent actors in the mix as well, but they are never used to their full potential and can often feel redundant (the prime example being Matthew Broderick as a high school teacher and, to a lesser extent, Matt Damon as another teacher). Ironically, the most interesting scenes tend to be ones that have almost nothing to do with the actual development of the plot such as some tense high-school diatribes about subjects like Syria or King Lear. It's hard to know how much of Margaret's shortcomings can be credited to its troubled production and heavily edited end result, but based on what is seen here it's hard to imagine this film being significantly better at five hours long or even three hours long. Even within relatively intact sequences, the editing is noticeably choppy and threatens to completely derail the film. Every other technical aspect is unremarkable. The characters are flawed but rarely in an interesting way while the performers alternate between sleepwalking through their roles and melodramatic overacting. Even so, I'm not about to give this an especially horrible rating, if only because I really want to convince myself that it was worth watching. For the most part, though, it's not.

#432 - Creature from the Black Lagoon
Jack Arnold, 1954



An expedition into the heart of South America discovers a monstrous amphibian creature who intends to either capture or kill the explorers.

I haven't really tried all that hard to keep up with the various classic movie monsters from the first half of the 20th century. Creature from the Black Lagoon is a pretty lean and mean little movie that doesn't exactly reinvent the wheel but it doesn't make for the most engaging film of its type either. I'm not really sure how best to appreciate old-school horror movies either. Age should not be a significant barrier when it comes to judging classics, but one wonders whether or not this really deserves to be considered a classic beyond the iconic nature of its creature and title. It's not like it doesn't try to be a good movie as far as technique goes - the rubber suit used to bring the eponymous creature holds up relatively well for someone jaded by MST3K episodes featuring monster movies from the same era. The plot and characterisation, meanwhile, is about as passable as it gets without being truly terrible.

Given the time period, it's unsurprising that the film would rather try to pad out its extremely brief running time by drawing out the suspense, even if it is by rather ridiculous means (why yes, token pretty female character, take a leisurely swim in the mysterious Amazonian lagoon - even without the threat of a "gill-man", that still seems awfully hazardous). It gets some credit for its underwater photography and a decently conceived creature, but it's difficult to care a whole lot about the human cast beyond not particularly wanting them to get attacked by the creature. Not automatically terrible, but I'd have a hard time recommending it to people who didn't already have some interest in classic monster movies.

#433 - Anna Karenina
Clarence Brown, 1935



In 19th-century Russia, a married aristocratic woman begins an affair with a dashing military officer.

The 1935 film version of Anna Karenina attempts to accomplish the impressive task of condensing hundreds of pages of Russian literature into a ninety-minute film, and it does so rather well. It features the screen presence of Greta Garbo as the eponymous heroine, though her uniquely pronounced accent only serves to draw attention to how most of the cast don't seem to bother affecting even remotely Russian accents (though maybe that's for the best). They deliver acceptable performances in the meantime and do a decent enough job bringing Tolstoy's dialogue to life. The same goes for the production design that does quite a good job of bringing the film's period setting to life.

Though I haven't finished reading the novel (I will someday), you don't have to have even started it in order to feel like there is something missing in such a lean adaptation. You get a good enough sense of the tragic love story that exists between Anna, Count Vronsky (Fredric March), and Count Karenin (Basil Rathbone) but a sense is basically all that can be provided in the space of ninety minutes as it covers all the basics of the plot with the use of decent enough actors. Anna Karenina is not a bad film, but it does really feel like the CliffsNotes version of the novel as it chops out entire sections of the book (such as the entire plot about Konstantin Levin, who is only glimpsed briefly in this film but has a much larger significance to the book) in order to tell a decent romance story. It's enjoyable enough, but it's not that great of a classic.

#434 - Going My Way
Leo McCarey, 1944



A young and easy-going Irish Catholic priest is transferred to a new parish and comes into conflict with the strict old priest who already resides there.

It could be very easy to just hate Going My Way and its unapologetically sentimental tale that would help to lay the groundwork for decades of Oscar-bait to come, but as far as those particular types of film go, this one isn't exactly bad. A lot of that is due to the charming presence of Bing Crosby as the charismatic Father O'Malley, whose arrival into the local parish is almost too easy to predict. There's his being set up as a free-spirited alternative to the crusty old Father Fitzgibbon (Barry Fitzgerald), whose grouchy traditionalism makes him the closest thing this story has to an antagonist; even then, he still comes across as a somewhat likeable curmudgeon more so than a genuine villain. Due to the presence of such a talented singer as Crosby, the attempts to try to reform local delinquents and care for a runaway woman naturally come about in the form of musical numbers, which don't grate for the most part.

What could easily have descending into irritating fluff has just enough quality to it so as to be merely tolerable instead. The film does seem to know just how schmaltzy it can be and its self-awareness is a point in its favour, but self-awareness only goes so far when the film is padded with some generally average numbers. Crosby and Fitzgerald make for good actors who anchor the film reasonably well, though their abilities only go so far in otherwise passable company. There's enough charm so that you can't really hate it, but it isn't exactly spectacular either.

#435 - Taxi Driver
Martin Scorsese, 1976



A disgruntled ex-Marine starts working as a New York taxi driver to fight off insomnia, but his encounters with the population only serve to fuel his own mental instabilities.

I'm not sure when the last time I saw Taxi Driver was, but I've considered it a major favourite ever since I first saw it about a decade or so ago. It's interesting to see which films I loved back in the day have held up even now (and it'll be interesting to see what holds up ten years from now), and it's always interesting to see how the opinions change. Approaching Taxi Driver as a teenager, it was hard not to get taken in by the intimidating yet intriguing imagery surrounding the film, such as Robert de Niro's mohawked protagonist wielding multiple hand-cannons as he threatened to make good on his promise to rid New York of the scum of the earth. Of course, even as I watched the film then it wasn't hard to see that there was a lot more ambiguity to it than that, and subsequent viewings have only revealed a lot more (though there is the odd exception).

It almost goes without saying that a lot of what makes Taxi Driver a nigh-undeniable classic is due to the masterful performance by Robert de Niro as Travis Bickle, who initially garners an audience's sympathy as he struggles with unspecified mental problems (possibly as a result of being a Vietnam veteran) and frequent self-medication amidst a general sort of loneliness that is only exacerbated by the reactionary unfriendliness of many New Yorkers that he meets. Of course, there are enough incidents to convince an audience that just because he's clearly disturbed and wants to connect with people in some meaningful way doesn't mean that he doesn't go about in all the wrong ways and can stop being sympathetic; even his most ostensibly friendly encounters with Cybill Shepherd's idealistic campaign worker have a somewhat mean-spirited undercurrent of social ineptitude that makes his inevitable failure not seem like so much of a stretch.

While de Niro easily creates his most iconic role (if not his best) and often has to carry the film in isolation, the film still wouldn't be quite what it is without the considerable ensemble of characters that populate the rest of the film. Shepherd makes for a believable straight character and her interplay with Albert Brooks' snarky co-worker has little to do with the film's main plot yet is amusing enough to not feel like a distraction. Jodie Foster also does well at acting beyond her years as an underage sex worker, while Harvey Keitel delivers a brilliantly off-kilter performance as her pimp (and their one scene together might just be the most uncomfortable in a film riddled with uncomfortable scenes). Even bit parts such as the group of cabbies that Travis hangs out with (one of whom is memorably played by Peter Boyle) or a Secret Service agent still manage to make for memorable and well-performed characters, even if they do end up being little more than sounding boards for de Niro a fair chunk of the time.

As far as technique goes, the film looks amazing with its incredibly harsh neon-soaked aesthetic that tries to make New York look as dark and hellish as possible. Slow motion, smoothly gliding camera movements, editing that manages to be rather jagged at times but not without purpose, plus the washed-out film stock in the finale that attempts to dilute graphic violence but ends up coming across as a distinctive stylistic decision. There's the late great Bernard Herrmann's score that may be more than a little repetitive but its jazzy score that alternates between wistful saxophone and atonal orchestral bursts suits the movie just fine and it's hard to imagine anything else replacing it. Part of the reason that Taxi Driver has managed to stay a major favourite for well over a decade is because, underneath its character study of "God's lonely man" that has been often imitated but never bettered, it still remains a mercurial film that oozes with personality and offers up an immersive cinematic world to the point where its somewhat thin plot almost feels irrelevant, and if a film wants to have some serious staying power then it needs to have some astounding atmosphere to take over when the narrative starts getting a little too familiar.

for some reason after reading your review, it just occurred to me all the weird similarities there are between Taxi Driver and Fight Club. both are about young troubled men with insomnia, who find themselves increasingly disgusted with the people they see around them and in the end take steps to destroy the 'chaos' they see around them, thus causing more chaos. plus i think it's kinda safe to say that Travis Bickle probably has some kind of personality disorder.

I'm sure there are more as well, but yeah, it goes without saying that Taxi Driver and Fight Club share similarities. I even considered putting them in a three-way tie with Mike Leigh's Naked due to the superficially identical "disaffected white male lashing out at urban society" premise when I put together my last Top 100 but I eventually decided that they were distinct enough beasts to be counted separately.

#436 - The Insider
Michael Mann, 1999



Based on the true story of a respected biochemist who intends to blow the whistle on a tobacco company's unethical practices but soon finds his personal and professional life falling apart as a result.

Michael Mann's career has always come across as a director whose work tends to be classified rather easily as "genre fare", most frequently involving dramas and thrillers that could be filed under the crime sub-genre. The Insider does technically involve crime as its driving source of conflict, but it is far different to just about every other Mann film I've seen. Here the crime is white-collar by nature, with the executives of tobacco companies using plausible deniability as part of their testimonies before Congress in regards to the addictive nature of nicotine. One such company's practices involve adding chemicals to increase addictivity, which prompts one of its most prominent biochemists (Russell Crowe) to speak up about the illegality of the company's activities. Enter a hard-hitting journalist (Al Pacino) who is cynical enough to know how corporations work (including CBS, which he works for in order to bring big stories to 60 Minutes) but still holds fast to a code of honour when it comes to protecting his sources even when others won't, which ends up causing all sorts of conflict between him and Crowe as the latter's decision to go public with his knowledge results in unemployment, marital strife, and threats that may or may not be coming from his former employers.

Pacino and Crowe both turn in a couple of their best performances here - the former keeps his cartoonish late-period overacting to a minimum, whereas the latter plays very much against type as a hapless family man who communicates a believable combination of frustration and vulnerability. They lead an impressive ensemble cast that all deliver good performances, especially Christopher Plummer as 60 Minutes interviewer Mike Wallace. They definitely elevate the story, which does threaten to drag a bit due to its lengthy running time and almost complete lack of external action, but that doesn't matter since it leans more towards drama than thriller and only has the occasional hint of justifiable paranoia to prop up the true-story narrative. Of course, while Mann has a tendency to get good performances out of a variety of actors, he has always been a director who made a name on the basis of technical prowess, and there is a lot of that here. There's a distinct colour palette made up mainly of blues and greens, which provides a largely mundane film with visual flair while also complementing the film's dour tone perfectly. While The Insider doesn't provide much in the way of elaborate spectacles, it is definitely not a film that needs such things to maintain one's interest. The fact that it can earn a reputation as one of Mann's best despite the lack of external action common to his other films is as good a testament to his filmmaking ability as anything else.

Brilliant!

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Fear and Loathing in MoFo... The Gunslinger 45's Top 50 Favorite Films

In the 10 Ring: Gunslinger45's reviews

What an unexpected and surprising response.

#437 - Avatar
James Cameron, 2009



In the mid-22nd century, a paraplegic Marine is recruited into a space exploration mission on a moon populated by a race of humanoid aliens.

Oh, dear.

That was the review of Avatar I wrote at the tail end of 2009 on the basis of a single theatrical viewing (and judging by the last paragraph, in 2-D, no less). Fast-forward to almost six years later and I not only never saw it in 3-D per what I said in that review's final paragraph, but I more or less forgot about ever trying to watch it again until it aired on TV the other night. This was probably in no small part to the cynical malaise that settled in once people started to see past the hype involved with Cameron's supposedly revolutionary decade-in-the-making follow-up to the mega-blockbuster Oscar gold of Titanic and started to dissect its rather hollow and derivative premise. Sam Worthington plays the paraplegic Marine who has been chosen to participate in a scientific mission to a moon named Pandora that is covered with lush wildlife, rich in valuable resources, and has giant blue humanoids known as the Na'vi for a dominant species. He is brought to Pandora simply because he is the twin brother of a recently deceased scientist who served as the basis for an "avatar", a Na'vi clone that can be controlled through a neural link. Of course, it turns out that the reason for the existence of avatars isn't just for the purposes of benevolent anthropology as it turns out that the real reason humans are on Pandora is to search for aforementioned valuable resources and they will stop at nothing to get them.

While I do have to concede that, when you're putting together a massive effects-driven blockbuster with a nine-figure budget and a brand-new intellectual property then you're going to want to play things reasonably safe, here things are played disappointingly safe without significant variation on the other pieces of fiction to which it bears incredible narrative similarity. The characters and their performers are serviceable enough in some rather clichéd roles; however, the people who have to act from underneath motion-capture CGI have a bit of a hard time trying to emote convincingly without audible overacting, which is difficult considering that they also have to contend with a fictional language and cat-people mannerisms. That's also the one instance where the CGI falters, because the rest of the film is otherwise a spectacular piece of visual work. However, the same lack of creativity that scuppers the narrative also bleeds through to the visuals as well, which paint Pandora as a lush rainforest environment whose only real concessions to its extraterrestrial nature come in the form of floating mountains or bizarre dinosaur-like creatures. The film does develop a somewhat consistent mythology, but it feels like little more than window dressing in this regard. Though the quality of the visuals still hold up even on 2-D TV, the weaknesses in the plot and characterisation are more than enough to prevent Avatar from being a genuine classic or even just a decent blockbuster. If Cameron and co. really is planning on spinning a whole franchise out of this concept, there are plenty of things that need fixing for when the sequels start to happen.

#438 - Evolution
Ivan Reitman, 2001



After a meteorite crashes to Earth, a pair of high-school teachers investigate it and discover the existence of an alien life form that evolves at an incredibly fast and dangerous rate.

Evolution is a real blast from the past that I enjoyed immensely back in the day, but getting the chance to revisit it lately for the first time in over a decade hasn't exactly been too kind to it. Given who directed it, I probably should have realised far earlier that it basically reworks the premise of Ghostbusters to be about aliens instead of ghosts and works in a bunch of typical alien invasion tropes in the process. The core group of heroes is fundamentally the same, with a comically serious scientist (David Duchovny), a wise-cracking womaniser (Orlando Jones), a clumsy scientist (Julianne Moore), and a gormless layman (Seann William Scott). In addition to the supernatural threat, there's also an obstructive government official trying to disrupt the heroes' attempts to save the world, here an Army general (Ted Levine) seeking to deal with the alien menace however he sees fit. Of course, while the plot rolls along as quickly as the creatures climb the evolutionary chain, much like its spiritual predecessor the plot is only there to serve the comedy more so than be compelling in its own right.

I don't know if it's the fact that the comedy hasn't held up or if it just wasn't too funny in the first place, but either way watching Evolution now just makes me feel like there's an awful lot of wasted potential here. Just enough thought is put into the plot and effects to make them come across as somewhat decent (for a 2001 comedy, in any case), but that just makes the film's lack of good comedy stand out even more. Leaving aside its derivative nature, the humour is perhaps a little too immature for its own good. Duchovny and Jones have a few good moments thanks to their odd-couple chemistry (the latter of whom definitely steals the show as this film's version of Peter Venkman), yet there's not a lot of good humour to be derived from the alien creatures themselves. There's possibly the sequence involving a particularly large and invasive alien mosquito, but even then that comes across as a bit too immature for its own good. Evolution may involve some good actors and uphold its rather interesting take on the alien invasion premise with some decent enough effects work, but since it advertises itself mainly as a comedy it's hard to ignore just how often its jokes fall flat (and how the storyline's resolution/punchline basically depends upon an unapologetic use of product placement). Under different circumstances, this could have been a minor classic, but as it stands it's just a major misfire.

#439 - Shark Tale
Rob Letterman/Vicky Jenson/Bibo Bergeron, 2004



In a world where fish and sharks share an uneasy co-existence, one fish who dreams of rising above his station gets the opportunity when he takes the credit for the death of a shark.

Shark Tale is probably the best indicator of DreamWorks Animation at its worst. It's a computer-animated film about talking fish that just so happened to come out in the wake of Pixar's own computer-animated talking-fish movie Finding Nemo, but it also happens to expose the main differences between the two studios at the time. In DreamWorks' case, this was not for the better. While a lot of family-oriented films try to provide something for the whole family, whether it's cartoon slapstick for the young ones and clever gags for the older members, here Shark Tale takes it to the extreme in its building a story off a rather cracked-up Mafia parody where the general fish population of an underwater city (which already beggars belief even without the fact that it apparently has a sushi shop) live in constant fear of the gangster-like sharks that live in the wreck of the Titanic (yes, really). Enter Will Smith as a cocky lower-class fish who wants to make it to the upper class and, thanks to a series of bizarre circumstances involving the two sons of the local shark boss (Robert de Niro), becomes renowned for becoming the first fish to ever kill a shark and thus becomes a rich and famous hero, but of course all sorts of circumstances threaten to bring it all down...

While it's become common practice for American animated films to star a lot of recognisable Hollywood actors, Shark Tale once again takes things to an extreme by modelling its aquatic characters on the vocal talent to uncanny effect. That way you get weird moments like a great white shark with de Niro's distinctive facial mole or a femme fatale fish that you can tell is being played by Angelina Jolie even before she says a word. If anything, most of the appreciation for your typical DreamWorks film from the 2000s seems to come from picking apart the nonsensical nature of its world-building and humour (just look at Bee Movie, which might be the only DreamWorks movie that's more ridiculous than this one), and Shark Tale becomes way too dependent on surreal human-based behaviour or simple pop culture parodies for much of its humour. Though it does have the occasional genuine chuckle (I laughed way too hard at this scene, for instance), most of the time the obvious nature of the references and jokes is enough to induce cringing. The story and message are also kind of simple and also a bit muddled by the universe that's been established, while charismatic actors do their best with the sub-standard material. The animation also looks pretty decent and colourful for the most part, apart from the aforementioned detours into the Uncanny Valley. Shark Tale may have earned a place on my Worst 100 a few years back, but it's grown on me just enough to not make it back on there. It may be an extremely cringe-worthy example of everything wrong with family films in the 21st century, but that doesn't automatically make it the worst movie ever. At the very least, it's too bizarre to not be at least a little entertaining.