Superb Scenes With Seanc

Director: Billy Wilder

Double Indemnity is a skillfully written, engaging film-noir. The film follows insurance salesman Walter Neff who falls for a clients wife when meeting her for the first time. They soon develop a scheme to write an accidental death policy on the husband and stage his murder as an accident. All appears to be going smoothly until the claims manager, Barton Keyes, grows suspicious.

Keyes is played by Edward G. Robinson who in my estimation takes this film from another ho-hum noir to a completely engrossing film. Keyes and Neff's scenes together are by far the best thing in Double Indemnity, leaps and bounds ahead of Neff's scenes with Stanwyck's femme fatale. MacMurray is also doing good work as Neff. He particularly excels in the scenes where he is feeling the pressure of his scheme unraveling. The weak link in my opinion is Stanwyck. She feels like someone who is sleep walking through their role, never allowing us to feel the emotion of her character.

Double Indemnity has made me excited to see more of Wilder's work. It is a very straight forward story elevated by Wilder's touches. His dialogue is brilliant. The twists are smart but well thought out. Allowing us to enjoy the story arc as it fleshes out rather than simply trying to fool us as so many thrillers do. The visual touches in the film bring a coolness as well. I was particularly fond of the way Neff lights his matches with his fingertips. Not only was this a cool touch, but Wilder uses it to convey character's emotions visually rather than verbally on a couple of occasions. Double Indemnity is a true classic.

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Letterboxd

I was going to ask if you really thought that Edward G. Robinson really drags this from ho-hum to completely engrossing. However, you then mention many of the aspects of the film I was going to bring up, so I'm guessing I shouldn't take that as literally as it's written.

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

Director: Jeff Nichols

Mud is the story of two best friends who happen upon a boat on an island that somehow became stuck in a tree. They plan to attempt to get the boat down and make it their own but discover that someone else already has the same plan. That someone is Mud (McConaughey) who tells the boys he is holding up on the island until he meets his girlfriend. Ellis, our protagonist, is immediately intrigued by Mud's personality and his situation and begins to do favors for him. Every favor leads to another favor and soon Ellis is learning more about Mud and his life than he should. He is also becoming more and more entwined in whatever conflicts Mud is involved in. Ellis's best friend Neckbone is leery of helping Mud from the beginning but is more than willing to support his friend in his decisions.

Ellis (Tye Sheridan) is the heart of this film and carries nearly every scene. Ellis is a complex character. He loves without reservation, he fearlessly confronts any perceived wrongs, and he is 100% committed to those in his life that he connects with. He sees something in Mud that he wants for himself and though Mud is flawed he commits to his cause as if it was his own. Ellis learns many life lessons over the course of the film. We can begin to see his faith in humanity shaken. That the film does not end with us having a concrete feeling of how this character will endue is a testament to Nichols script.


Some may read Mud as a cautionary tale for Ellis. I found him to be a picture of unconditional love. Mud is certainly flawed and would probably find his lot in life improved by cutting certain ties. Ultimately though his life would be hollow without the passion and love he has developed.


Nichols has created a nearly perfect film. There are a couple of characters and one five minute scene that in my opinion keep this from being a perfect film. Other than that the film is flawless. As in Take Shelter Nichols creates an amazing sense of place. We are gladly immersed in the world of the characters. The characters are rich and ambiguous. We feel like we know even the secondary characters who are given limited time. Shannon is particularly memorable as Neckbone's uncle. No scene is wasted, Nichols gives us emotion and context every step of the way. I can't wait to experience Mud again.

My daughter thought it was great here.

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

If it's as good as Shotgun Stories and Take Selter I'm in, many think it's his best of the three. I think Nichols could become one of the great directors of our time. Excited to see Mud once I get the chance.

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I'm interested in seeing Mud based purely on the strength of Take Shelter which I loved. If you were forced into choosing, which did you prefer? Oh and thanks donnie for reminding me about Shotgun Stories. Meant to track it down after watching Take Shelter but struggled to find a DVD at anything close to a decent price and then forgot about it.

Congrats Mark to Sarah and by extension you.

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Thanks mark for sharing your daughters review. Very nice review.

I liked Take Shelter JayDee, but didn't love it. I love Mud, I think this will be one that sticks with me for quite a long time. The characters and atmosphere are rich just like Take Shelter, but I def connected with the themes more. I think you and donnie will really like it judging by how you feel about his others.

BTW I believe Shotgun Stories is streaming on netflix, I need to check it our as well.

Director: JJ Abrams

I want to love Star Trek so much. I love well done world building. I love wise ass larger than life heroes. I love action set pieces that bring me to the edge of my seat. So why do I find it so hard to fall in love with Star Trek when I found it so easy to fall for the Lord Of The Rings, Star Wars, and Marvel universes? I have tried. I have seen every film. I have even watched more than a few Next Generation episodes. I simply never connect and cannot put my finger on a simple reason why.

Into Darkness does well what most of its predecessors have. All the characters are here in their proper form. The Enterprise looks better than ever. More than enough eater eggs for true fan boys. The action set pieces are huge and plentiful and I think that is my biggest issue with the latest installment. The dialogue and character building feels like a formality on our way to another over long action sequence. Most of the character building is done through cheap humor. Hundreds of jokes are thrown at us at not very many stick unfortunately.

Into The Darkness is all about the spectacle. If you go to the movies to watch pretty people run and shoot at each other among pretty settings than there is plenty for you here. If you want a film to remember for any amount of time or to connect with on any emotional level, move along.

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Why don't I trust Tarantino yet. Pulp Fiction and Inglorious Bastards are among my 10-15 favorite movies ever. I also love Jackie Brown, Reservoir Dogs, and Django Unchained. However I always felt like I enjoyed those other genres even if Tarantino turned them on their head. I have no interest in Samurai or martial art films. Your not gonna see any Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan in my blu-ray collection. Surely Tarantino cannot make me enjoy a samurai sword wielding, revenge seeking hero or blood spraying like a geyser from severed limbs. Of course he can, he is the master. Not only can he make me enjoy it, but he will fill it with such rich characters and dialogue that it will immediately leap over films that I have loved and been watching for years on my favorites list.

I don't know how he does it. When I think of the characters he creates, they must look foolish on paper. A 17 year old catholic school girl uniform wearing assassin. A Shaolin Monk who can balance on a sword in mid air. A hospital orderly who accepts cash from degenerates who want to have sex with comatose patients and drives a truck marked Pussy Wagon. Surely these are not characters in a film I love. Tarantino's characters are so perfect because he writes perfect dialogue for them and does not miss a detail. We feel a connection with every character even those we do not spend very much time with. We feel like we know them because of the way they dress, because of their reactions to other characters, because of the way they smoke a cigarette, because of the car they drive.

Tarantino starts Kill Bill with a simple narrative but immerses us in his world with precision. His non-linear story telling is distracting in the hands of other directors. Somehow when we come to the end of a Tarantino film we can't see the story being told any other way. That is because he knows at what point we need to know details better than we do. He realizes if he tells the story straight forward we will lose interest, the intrigue will be gone. He starts volume 2 where we would have started volume 1, and the film is better for it. One of the biggest reveals of the story is handed to us at the end of volume 1 and somehow we forget its importance until the final act of the entire film. Every scene is perfect and in its perfect place.

I will always view these films as a whole, and that will annoy some people. A sequel is something the director never envisioned or possibly only hoped for. A film that feels like an add on not a continuation. Kill Bill is one whole story, beginning to end. One would not exist without the other. Tarantino created another masterpiece, a perfect film. I am just disappointed it took me so long to experience it. Now Tarantino could surely never make me love a grindhouse flick right?

Right. Death Proof is the only 'weak' movie he ever made in his career, so far, in my opinion (although it has a few good moments).

I agree about the Kill Bill movies. They both form one story, but they are quite different in style. I liked them both a lot, but I personally think the first one is a better, because of its style. It had the best scenes of the two movies, in my opinion.







ETCETERA...

All great scenes but gun to my head I would choose volume 2 because of Thurman's scenes with Carradine. In the beginning and the end. Also thought Madsen was amazing. Her being buried and the snake in the case both through me for a loop. Great stuff.

Sorry that you didn't have a particularly postive experience with Into Darkness sean. I didn't realise you weren't much of a fan going in which certainly wouldn't have helped. The fact that I am a proud trekkie certainly helped me overcome many of the film's flaws.

And despite seeing bits and pieces a few times for some reason I have still never gotten round to watching the Kill Bill films properly.

Go see Kill Bill and get back to me in four hours. In my opinion if you have loved anything by Tarantino you will love it.

I'm glad you loved Kill Bill, I too am a massive Tarantino fan and love everything he has done, Pulp Fiction, Inglourious Basterds and Reservoir Dogs are my top three then the rest I'm unsure about, it'll take time to truly judge Django Unchained in comparison with his other films, though I loved it.

But yeh Kill Bill is definitely one film just split in to two parts, taken from my top 150 thread:

The film immediately starts off by revisiting the Church massacre that set the events of the two films in motion, we are providing with much more background information and the character of Bill is fully introduced for us. Whilst the first film was very much a over then top fun film the indulged itself in bloody style, this one is more a film filled with great substance, really tightening the two films together and strengthening this revenge tale with great details that make the finale all the more satisfying.

I've done a post on here somewhere about my annoyance with people who complain about Kill Bill or QT or something, it's about part 2 and the different style (similar to paragraph) above, but I've searched and can't seem to find it.

Death Proof is great by the way, I went in to it with low expectations, watched it and was very surprised by how much I enjoyed it, even for Tarantino. It's great fun, the first hour is honestly as good as anything he's done for me.

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I couldnt agree with you more daniel. You described the difference in the films perfectly and that is exactly why I prob prefer 2 if I had to choose. However I sure am glad they both exist together. On another note Tarantino's films are one of the only ones in my collection where I will throw them in when I just feel like watching a single scene. For example I have only watched Bastards all the way through three times but have probably watched the opening sequence six. I have done that with Pulp Fiction a few times as well and can see it happening with Kill Bill. I will def check out Deathproof soon.

As I think I said in reply to Daniel's post in his 150 thread, I feel Kill Bill 1 is a kind of Tarantino compilation of all the films of this genre that he's seen and loved, while Kill Bill 2 is the Tarantino version of that genre.

Tarantino may well think Death Proof is his worst film, but I prefer it greatly over Kill Bill and the dull, dull, dull, Inglorious Basterds. I feel I'd feel the same way about Django Unchained, as well. I think I'll wait for that to be shown on tv before I let it bore me to death or, simply, become irritated by it and fight against it till the end.

Tarantino's characters are way too rich and his dialogue way to tense and biting for me to ever consider him dull. Bastards has two of the best scenes in any movie ever in my opinion. Tastes diverged.

Director: Charlie Kaufman

This is certainly a hard film for a simple minded man like me to write about, but I really responded to it so I want to give it a try. First a couple of thoughts going in, number one I have a hard time responding to surrealism. I feel that the movies I love have a straight forward narrative but with complex characters and rich dialogue. Many would probably say this makes sense considering I am a simple minded man, and more than likely they are correct. This leads me to my second point which is considering I tend to enjoy films with straight forward narratives why do I respond so favorably to Kaufman scripts? My simple answer is he develops incredibly complex characters and writes some of the best dialogue in film today. What Kaufman also does that I enjoy is to not immediately turn us over to the surrealism of his stories. He lets us spend a little time with the characters before throwing them into their inevitable spirals. This allows us to connect with the characters and also gives us reference points to recall during our viewing of the film. All of these Kaufman characteristics are on full display in Synecdoche.

Synecdoche is the story of Caden (Hoffman). Caden is a playwright with a wife and a young daughter. As I stated before things begin simply enough, Caden is directing a version of Death Of A Salesman. His wife is an artist and although things do not appear to be perfect by any stretch they certainly do not appear tragic. Things for Caden begin to devolve when his wife asks him not to accompany her and his daughter to Germany, where she is going to work. On more than one occasion she tells Caden that he should stop doing others work and do something true and pure. After she leaves this is what Caden sets out to do and in my opinion is one of the central themes of the film. Caden sets out to create the perfect play, the perfect truth of his life. Because his perception of perfect truth is always changing, his play is always changing and thus is never complete.

Death is also front and center in Synecdoche. Everything in Caden's life is decaying including himself. This in and of itself of course is not an uncommon theme for a film but the way that Kaufman handles it is. I love the way that Kaufman has Caden handle the decay in his life. He is constantly scrubbing and cleaning as if he can stop the decay this way. This may not sound like an interesting way to handle this theme on paper but is visually striking and often jarring throughout the course of the film. Caden also has no sense of time which proves interesting during his interactions with others. Often he feels as if only months have gone by when it has in fact been years. Caden is pushing back against time and death throughout the entire film as all of us do throughout our lives.

Caden's relationships are central to the film. He remarries after his wife has been gone for a period and has another child. This relationship devolves like the others in his life and we never see any real connection between him and his second daughter. Caden even refers to his second daughter by his first daughter's name on a couple of occasions. Maybe the most interesting relationship he has in the film is between him and the box office girl we meet in the original theater. While their interactions are some of the more interesting in the film what I find most fascinating is that this seems to be the person that Caden has the most intimate connection with, but they are never intimate physically. I can certainly draw some conclusions from this and I am sure that Kaufman did not do this by accident.

I am positive that a book could be written about the other themes and the imagery in this film. I think Kaufman uses them brilliantly, they are thought provoking and make the film worthy of multiple viewings. We have a house that burns continually, a tattoo that comes to life or dies, diseases that manifest themselves and seem to go away without a trace. Characters are replaced by others multiple times. Our sense of time and place grows weaker and weaker as the film progresses. Caden's art grows bigger and bigger while his wife's gets smaller and smaller. Gender lines are blurred. I know I am forgetting countless others. This is what has made this film grow in my mind in the two days since I have viewed it and what makes me want to revisit it as soon as possible.

Director: Jeff Nichols

Nichols debut Shotgun Stories is every bit as rich and layered as his next two films. Nichols is adept at creating atmosphere and writing realistic, multilayer-ed characters. Shotgun Stories is the story of Son Hayes (Shannon) and his two brothers. We meet Son as his wife is separating from him because of his gambling. He asks his brother who is staying in a tent in the yard to move into the house with him. Soon after the third brother is in the home. Within the first fifteen minutes of the film we feel as if we know four characters, one of whom we have not even seen. Nichols perfectly displays the emotion and personality of his characters through their interactions with each other and the world they inhabit.

When the Hayes brothers learn that their father has passed away Son reluctantly decides that they should attend the funeral. Son's brothers are not prepared for the fact that he has decided to air their fathers dirty laundry of how he treated them and his mother in front of his seemingly happy current family. This sets off a feud between the three brothers and their four half brothers. The feud manifests itself in many forms, including some violent. Although much of what we see from both sets of brothers is tragic and appalling, we are slow to judgement concerning any of the characters because each act seems in some way justified by the previous one. Again this is a tribute to Nichols and his story telling.

Feuds in our culture are so prevalent in one form or another and Nichols is showing us the tragedy of this truth in an emotional and honest way. Everyone in this film feels justified in their hate and actions. However each action leads to an emotional or physical tragedy and leads to the next person feeling justified in their actions. Some of the characters in Nichols film are asked to forgive and forget even if their forgiveness is not asked for to stop the bleeding, for peace, and for future generations. Nichols is teaching us a valuable lesson in his debut film.

Director: Louis Leterrier

Leterrier took an interesting and entertaining premise and turned it into a mess of a film. By far the best part of the film is the half hour of exposition we get at the beginning. Unfortunately all of the exposition we receive revolves around the magic and not the actual characters. This makes for an entertaining first third but leaves the film hollow later on when we have to care about stakes and relationships.


From the moment we see the hooded figure in the opening scene we know that we will receive a twist reveal. Two or three possibilities are not just subtly revealed through the narrative but on a couple of occasions are suggested to us straight up in dialogue. The reveal becomes incidental and not at all exciting. Whether you guess right or wrong on the twist what is easy to see is that many plot holes are revealed as soon as everything becomes clear. Sound like an oxymoron? Yes it is.


Now You See Me's other major issue is the wasted cast. This is not to say that there are not some good things happening. Harrelson in particular has some of the best moments in the film. However when I have Ruffalo, Freeman, and Eisenberg at my disposal every scene should resonate, and few do. In particular I felt Eisenberg was wasted. It was as if they took the worst traits from his previous characters and created one super annoying character. He is a jerk, and what is worse, as with most of the other elements of the film, we are given no reason as to why he is a jerk. Freeman and Ruffalo simply have poorly written characters. They are in a lot of the film but are given surprisingly little to do of any interest.


Everything in Now You See Me is underdeveloped except for the magic. So if magic in a movie setting is your bag go and enjoy. If you need more than that to sustain your interest for an entire film, stay away.