Movie Tab II

Nope

Very tempted to play the whole "you just didn't like because you didn't understand it" defense, though I don't care about the film either.

I can definitely see that point, but I'm not going any farther out of my way to experience these lame films on the Cannes list.

I'll just uncheck them.

Look here, Loner. I don't know what drugs I was on when I came up with the "mark f whatchamacallit", but you never have to uncheck any film you've ever seen and hated. I don't want you to waste any more of your life then you already DO!

I am interested in your sharing the films you love though, and I mean with everybody, Bro!

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

Stuart Little is awesome in spanish with no subs.

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Hey thanks Mark. I'm sorry if you thought this was pointed at you. As far as the "mark f whatchamacallit" I was just being silly. I won't bring it up again.


This isn't going to happen. You and Harry Lime wanted my top 100 list. I got really tried of trying to put them in order. Especially when dealing with different genres. Repo Man kept messing things up.

I use to watch Jabberjaw in Spanish when I was drunk and sometimes when I wasn't.

Why put them in order? Just post your faves and maybe why they're better or worse than Repo Man.

A Canterbury Tale

In WW2, a land girl (Sheila Sim), American soldier (John Sweet), and a sergeant (Dennis Price), are making their way to Canterbury when they stumble upon a mystery- the mystery of the 'glue man', who pours glue on girls' heads. All the facts suggest that it's the magistrate, Thomas Colpeper (Eric Portman). But what's his motive? And do these modern-day pilgrims share the spirit of Chaucer's pilgrims, many a year ago?

The film has that wonderful Powell and Pressburger charm, though it's probably even more bizarre than A Matter of Life and Death. The 'mystery' drags a little and its link to the historical patriotism is a little strange but lovers of history and of course, Canterbury, will enjoy it. A worthy addition to the Powell and Pressburger collection, but non-converts may not be able to embrace the film's very strange aspects.

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You cannot have it both ways. A dancer who relies upon the doubtful comforts of human love can never be a great dancer. Never. (The Red Shoes, 1948)

Erin Brockovich



Honestly not as bad as I expected it to be. Julia Roberts takes on big corporations and lawyers in smart suits while swearing and wearing low cut tops, leaving her beardy boyfriend to watch her kids.



Hedwig and the Angry Inch



Memorable rock musical telling the story of transsexual singer Hedwig from childhood in East Germany to betrayal by ex-boyfriends, one of whom stole her songs. Striking and worth watching.



A Single Man



Colin Firth plays a middle-aged English college professor living in America in the 1960s who is suffering from a broken heart, his partner of 16 years, Jim (Matthew Goode), having died recently in a car crash. An exquisite film, well acted, well shot, stylish and emotionally resonant.

Resident Evil:Afterlife(2010)-Well the aclaimed technology used in Avatar doesn't live up to our expectations in Resident evil if any of you was hoping for that. The 3D is alright I guess even from time to time Paul Anderson sticks it in your face too much which is kind of anoying. The action is quite good and for fans of the game can make a lot of references to characters and places from the fourth and the fifth game. I'd say its a fun movie to watch if you are into zombies like me. However there is too much cliches and Albert Wesker talks so freaking anoyingly

The Darjeeling Limited



This is the one Wes Anderson film that I put on the back burner for a while. I finally watched it tonight, and I was really shocked. I always hear that the film is Anderson's worse, but I completely disagree. I am actually having trouble convincing myself that this wasn't better than The Royal Tenenbaums.

The Darjeeling Limited is probably the most visually stunning film Wes Anderson has created, and anyone that is a fan knows how great of a feat that is. The film follows three brothers (Brody, Schwartzman, Wilson) that haven't seen or heard from each other in over a year. They meet up on a train ride through India, and a great story of family, relationships, and self realization begins. Great performances by all three, but I really feel Adrian Brody's character had the most to give.

Wes Anderson isn't for everyone, thats for sure. In my book, The Darjeeling Limited is one of his best.

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If I had a dollar for every existential crisis I've ever had, does money really even matter?

What about flinging up a list but just ordering them alphabetically? Everyone's happy!

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

You make her sound like my ideal woman. Top summation!

I saw his list. Unfortunately, I deleted it when I had to clean my messages due to a lack of space. Not like I'd have posted it here or anything, that'd be kinda rude.

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"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

A Disney double here:

Dumbo

I'm not exactly the target market for the film- I prefer my Disney films to have more wit and be more fun (although I do find Lady and The Tramp very romantic). Small children will most likely enjoy it, although some parts are distressing. The songs are sweet- the plot is thin but small children won't care about that. Dumbo is mute but the animators did a top job making him look cute. It gets 3_5 because the appeal is mainly for young children, though the moral is admirable (older children looking for the same moral would do well to watch Hunchback of Notre Dame) and those interested in animation.

Adults may snigger at the repeated use of 'climax'- "Dumbo, you're a climax!" and the hilarious scene with Timothy Mouse asking the Ringmaster in his sleep "Are you getting that climax?" and the infamous pink elephant sequence is genius. Recommended for small children, sentimental adults, and the non-PC brigade.


Hercules

If you're a stickler for staying true to the classics, you might want to avoid this- or at least, suspend your disbelief (many films are historically inaccurate). Instead of being a serial rapist, Zeus is a jolly old god with a magnificent chest and his wife is a goddess, not a mortal that he raped. Just go with it, okay? Because this is a fun film.

The songs have a sort of gospel thing going on, except 'Go The Distance', which is the obligatory 'I want to belong/I'm having an existential crisis' song. They're fun songs, although none of them scream 'Disney classic', in the way that 'The Bare Necessities' or 'When You Wish Upon A Star' does. In the context of the film, they work very well though.

The best thing about the film is probably the screenplay, which is very witty. They really go for it with the Ancient Greek theme- attention to detail in this film is simply brilliant (watch out for a familiar lion skin...). It may not be a Disney classic but both adults and children can enjoy it, and it's one of the few Disney films that won't terrify anybody.

I'd refer to Dumbo as a film for all parents and their children so that basically covers everybody. If people can't take the crows at the end, they have a lot bigger problems than being "P.C." I'm happy that you seemed to like it but it does sound a bit like you feel you're "above" it. I find it exhilirating and one of Disney's best, but everybody knows I'm sentimental and like to laugh at unintentional sex jokes.

Repo Man is like that. I second the whole "alphabetical" deal Tacitus suggested - PimpDaShizzle put up such a list, why not you?

Butterfield 8 (1960)

Add me to the list of people who want to see Loner's list. I kind of wish I had done some more open-ended and un-ranked favorites kind of thing, like mark's been doing with his post-100 favorites. I keep wanting to go back and switch movies around on my "top 100", add a bunch and maybe drop a couple.

That's a good brief description of A Canterbury Tale. I think the oddness of that movie really worked for me. I remember the glue man but I don't recall the resolution to that plot-line. I'll have to watch it again and see what I think.

Here's what I've seen since my last post here. a bunch of re-watches in this recent batch:



Triumph of the Will (Riefenstahl, 1934)

This movie is pretty interesting and more-entertaining than I remember it, though at almost 2 hours, much of it very long crowd scenes this almost seems like an art film rather than "propaganda" for the masses. Aesthetically I think some of the beauty and power of this film - particularly the much-celebrated editing - was lost on me in some of those very long crowd and ceremonial scenes, but on the other hand I can appreciate much of it. I first learned of this movie in high school where my media arts teacher told us that Leni Riefenstahl basically tricked the Germans into taking Hitler seriously by shooting him at a low angle. I wish I had spoken up then because that's barely the tip of the iceberg in terms of rhetorical tactics this movie uses.

There's an important speech maybe 40 minutes or so in (I watched it over a week ago and didn't take notes) when Hitler is giving a speech to his army of shoveleers. Much of the lead-up to this is fun-and-games and cleverly-orchestrated footage of masses of revelers filling the streets and outlying fields of Nuremberg, followed by a quick run-through of the talking heads of the party, complete non-entities, yipping about how much they support Hitler. Then Hitler comes on and his speech to the crowd is about how not just the 1,000s there but all of Germany is there, watching and taking part in this. This point gets hammered throughout the film but it really got my attention, being told that by watching this I'm part of the Nazi party. This is a pretty effective and interesting film, certainly worth seeing.



Day of Freedom (Riefenstahl, 1935)

This one is also pretty engaging though it's basically an expo for German Military technology and organization, it's well made and at less than half an hour pretty engaging.





Little Murders (Arkin, 1971)

Really cruel satire of 1970s America adapted by Jules Feiffer from his own play. If you liked Carnal Knowledge I think this is even darker and weirder. Through that lens of sadistic voyeurism told in weird set-pieces the movie becomes something closer to a science-fiction alternate universe of New York rather than straight-up satirical lampooning but for me that made the movie all the creepier and funnier. The movie basically wants to show a logical but completely crazy progression for a misanthrope to become a violent sociopath, so if you're ready for something dark you might enjoy this as much as I did.





Year One (Ramis, 2009)

Passably decent "historical-epic" farce that follows the mold a little too faithfully for my taste, but Black and Cera both had some good moments. I may be underrating this slightly





The Untouchables (DePalma, 1987)

The last time I saw this was around when I put it up on my top 100. I think I enjoyed it slightly less overall this time around but it's still really good in my book, mainly because I don't see myself ever getting tired of DePalma's approach, where he seemed to take each scene in this movie as a chance for a fantastic standalone set-piece, of which there are many here.





Jaws (Spielberg, 1975)

Another extremely fun action-adventure with some truly harrowing moments on the cramped ship of an archetypal shark-hunting lunatic (though of course there's a pretty great explanation for his lunacy). I think this one may actually be a little better as a whole and the cinematography and natural lighting have plenty of outstanding moments. I got to take my girlfriend to see it on the big screen and I'm surprised she went for it since she got so grossed out at Piranhas 3-D that she actually had to leave the theater for a few minutes to cool her head. They basically both have all the same ingredients with the exception that Jaws seems to have been made by someone who knows how to cook them.





Never Been Kissed (Gosnell, 1999)

Another one that I didn't actually dislike but didn't particularly like either. Drew Barrymore seems to like starring in and producing these movies where she plays a writer or a quirky actress playing a role in a romantic movie within a cynical movie. In this one the cynical movie is the news paper Ebert writes for which is neutralized by the magically stratified movie world of "high school", which in turn is bested by Drew's writing and acting. I think they may have piled it on a little too thick and complicated on this one because it didn't really work for me, though as I said I don't dislike it. The messiness is actually kind of entertaining too.





A Taxing Woman (Itami, 1987)

Okay, I feel like this one deserves it's own whole post which maybe I'll feel up to doing some time. I've watched it either 4 or 5 times now since I first saw it about 10 years ago and I don't think I've ever really appreciated before this time how beautiful this movie is. There's all this really fantastic natural lighting and camerawork that grabs you from the first shot which shows you snow piling up through a window. Instead of the deep-focus of Kurosawa Itami really seems to want to keep you aware of depth while still having a lot of layered action going on within and in between shots.

This is a funny but also very serious movie in that for every esoteric example of incomprehensible, desperate scheming by people who want to avoid giving up anything at any cost, there's some detail so unexpected but so well-observed that you can't miss it, but it almost never seems to register consciously at first.

It's also very ambiguous as-satire in that it's really hard to say who are the good guys and who are the bad guys in this police procedural, though there are some all-too-human moments on both sides of the law.

Really I think I could enjoy this movie enough to have it as a favorite just on an aesthetic level, even if no matter how many times I watch it I might never fully "get" it.

I remember the sequel being darker in that it actually finds a villain (played by Rentaro Mikuni) who cloaks himself in a death-obsessed religion while he's in bed with gangsters on the one side and a little girl on the other, but I'll have to see it again.

Great theme song too.





Hue and Cry ([i]Chricton, 1947)

Interesting comical mystery with a cast of hundreds of kids who band together to take on a gang of fur-stealing crooks right out of a comic book. The mystery itself (whodunnit) is kind of silly and predictable but there's a lot of fun stuff in this movie, including a great bit where the hero of the movie is walking through the streets of London reading a crime comic and just stumbles into the scene he's reading. From there it becomes a battle to find and alter the comic book, which he figures is being used by real-life criminals to send coded messages to each other about who's turn it is to pull the job. I won't give it away but it gets pretty complicated from there. I rented this when I looked up some movies featuring Alastair Sim, who played the detective in Green for Danger and shows up briefly here as the eccentric "genius" writer.





Crazed Fruit (Nakahira, 1956)

Nihilistic portrayal of taiyozoku (Sun Tribe) youths in 50s Japan. Kind of a label for reckless, idle, disconnected teenagers growing up in the post-war Japan. This movie portrays them mostly as rather spoiled and jaded. It's about a doomed romance between one girl and two brothers, in which the older brother and girl are both hiding their self-serving antics from the younger, supposedly-innocent brother. It's brutal and very stylized and the all-around nastiness of the ending really did grab me pretty effectively, even if it doesn't seem to want to say anything.

About four years after this Nagisa Oshima did his own "sun" film which I think tries to bury the sun tribe in even more nihilism and style.

It was a bit scary at times